Exclusive: Ecorazzi Goes "Ultimate Vegan" With Erik Marcus' New Book!

By MPD | December 3, 2008

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If you’ve been vegan for any reasonable amount of time, you probably know the name Erik Marcus. Author, blogger, podcast extraordinaire, Erik has been promoting the veggie way of life for over 20 years! With his new book, The Ultimate Vegan Guide: Compassionate Living Without Sacrifice, Erik discusses the vegan lifestyle in straight-forward way that’s guaranteed to help anyone go veg! Ecorazzi recently sat down with Marcus to discuss his new book, celebs and all things vegan!

Ecorazzi: This is your third book! How does The Ultimate Vegan Guide: Compassionate Living Without Sacrifice differ from the other two?

Erik Marcus: The Ultimate Vegan Guide was a huge departure for me. My first two books were extremely research intensive. This time around, I basically tried to dump my twenty years of experience as a vegan into one slender, entertaining, information-filled book. Readers tell me the book’s taught them every key thing they need to know in order to easily switch to a vegan diet.

E: You own the highly coveted domain, Vegan.com! Tell our readers all about the party going on over there!

EM: I think one of my main professional obligations is to stay current on every important piece of news related to vegetarianism and animal rights. So whenever something pops up on my radar that I find especially interesting, I blog about it on Vegan.com. I also do an informal interview podcast every month, which provides me the chance to chat with people who are making a difference. I commonly bring on top activists, cookbook authors, and anyone whose work I ‘m genuinely interested in learning more about.

E: As somebody’s who’s been following the vegan movement for a while, how do you feel it’s changed over the last few years?

EM: It just keeps getting easier to be vegan. Great new foods are constantly being released, and the bar keeps getting raised in terms of quality. Going vegan used to mean you were stuck eating unexciting foods prepared from amateurish cookbooks. But now — whether we’re talking convenience food, restaurant food, or cookbooks — there are numerous options for vegans that are stupendous.

Vegan living is in ascension and factory farming is in retreat. California’s Proposition 2 has resoundingly shown that the public wants to ban the worst abuses that occur on factory farms.

E: Now I know you aren’t so big on celebrities…BUT I DON’T CARE!! On the count of three — favorite celeb EVER and why!

EM: The celebrities I’d most want to meet are the vegans and near-vegans who have made the greatest efforts for animals, and have inspired the most people to change their diets. Some of these people include Paul McCartney, Daryl Hannah, Joaquin Phoenix, Pamela Anderson, Moby, Alicia Silverstone, James Cromwell, and Chrissie Hynde.

E: What’s next for Erik Marcus? Where can we read/see/hear you next?

EM: You’ll see me every day on the Vegan.com blog. Since I just brought The Ultimate Vegan Guide to Press, I don’t currently have any major projects in the works.

E: This is my very favorite question ever and I always save it for last: If you could meet any famous veggie – dead or alive – who would it be and why?

EM: If I made the effort, I’m sure I could meet almost any living vegetarian that I had a sincere interest in meeting. So, it would be a lot more exciting to choose someone dead: I’ll go with Gandhi, since his concept of activism has been a model for some of the best animal rights work happening today. Also, I bet he has the cosmic pull that would enable me to have a glass of brandy with Churchill.